Vertical Limit

The unexpected popularity of Cycling iQ’s ‘Vertical limit’ series of articles, reviewing twenty years of change in the bicycle industry – from the first days of mail-order to the present dynamic online marketplace – appears to...

Consumers of cycling products have been taken for quite a ride during the last two decades. Bicycle brands, their distributors and retailers, demonstrated a remarkable endurance and capacity to sustain a profitable, trust-based supply chain model...

The emergence of e-commerce in the bicycle market was an affront to almost every aspect of an industry business model that had for years thrived on handshakes, muffin-toting sales representatives and the seductive embrace of high...

Year 2001. Taiwanese OEM production hummed along, retail prices were buoyant, and cycling was enjoying an upswing in popularity across the Asia-Pacific region. However, as the new millennium’s first decade matured, so too did a trio...

Free-market capitalism, a cycling boom and supply-chain protectionism made the 1990’s a financial boon for bicycle brands, their distributors and retailers. The highly profitable business model of selling bicycles manifested in scaled-up physical supply nodes designed...

2011 is a fine time to be a consumer of cycling equipment. Brands and their downstream re-sellers are clambering over each other to cut through the noise created from market re-structuring. Many players in the bicycle...

Accessibility used to be all that stood between a bicycle brand and a consumer. Today, it’s more complicated. Multiple business models co-exist, creating a plethora of purchasing options for consumers. It is both exciting and confronting....